Wednesday, 16 March 2016

A Borough, a District, and a Quarter

Mayors, Lords, Grand Officials, and Master Judges bicker over blocks when the going is good, and claim no responsibility for them during hard times.

Boundaries shift and overlap.

Whether a piece of the city is a borough, district, quarter, or town is completely unrelated to its size or significance, and the reasons are buried in paperwork from back when it was named.

Each region has a number of Points of Interest, which present variable opportunities.

-------------------------

High Borough of Mouse-and-Key - Testing-Slum for the newest engineering prototypes.

The Hyperwire
- Take an incredibly slow, crowded car up to the highest point for miles and get a good view of the surrounding boroughs.
- Try not to fall to a messy death down in the lower slums.
- Try not to hit a snag and hang helplessly for hours until a trained mock-monkey swings along to fix the mechanism.

Siren Mast
- Broadcast and receive messages from the handful of other prototype radio masts in the city. Mostly engineering nerd chatter.
- Join the techno-pilgrims that come here to view the wonder of engineering.
- Avoid the Rad-Warriors, overly groomed thugs that think the tower's emissions are bound to attract hostile extradimensional beings.

Community-One

- Hear lectures from some of the great engineering thinkers, with some of the worst ideas in history.
- Visit the Office of Collateral Damage to process paperwork you might have incurred through less civilian-aware activities, attending a self-improvement seminar to avoid future problems.
- Join the waiting list for an audience with Dieter Volt, the bespectacled genius behind the borough's new purpose.

-------------------------

Temple District of Veztm - Ten tourists to every local.

Schism Point
- Just try to see any of the temple architecture through the sea of obnoxious tourists and pilgrims.
- Avoid upsetting the actual residents of the region, each from one of a hundred sects, each with a thousand senseless protocols.
- Buy terrible merchandise.

The Splendid Honeymoon
- Meet travellers from across Bastion at the nightly Buffet. Each night is a different bizarre cuisine.
- Visit the cellar-garden to buy an overpriced bottle of wine or marvel at the domesticated subterranean creatures.
- Take advantage of the overpriced rock-spa that will offer any treatment with discrete service.

Black Fountain
- Finally find a place with a tolerable amount of tourists.
- Drip some of your blood into the black water and walk down one of the eight alleyways to go on a spirit journey.
- Drip another's blood into the black water and you get a vision of their current whereabouts, and future desire.

-------------------------

Dead Quarter of Luon - Broken pre-industrial luxury.

Princee Castle
- Enjoy the lavishly welcome foyer and entrance hall.
- Break through any of the locked doors to feel the wrath of the paranoid, trap-obsessed Princee long after his death.
- Find the dead Princee to rob his jewels.

The Last Smithy
- Meet Rab, an actor pretending to be hundreds of years old, acting as a medieval smith.
- Get charged obscene prices for "ancient methods" that really have nothing on modern metalwork.
- Hear Rab complain about how technology is the wrong direction for Bastion.

The Sour Oyster

- Reel at the stench of long-rotten shellfish and old beer.
- Carefully approach an unexploded siege-bomb lying in the middle of the tavern (d12 damage to all in the block).
- Discover the socialist commune of Mock-Rats living underneath the floorboards quite happily.